"This is the most important election of our lifetime."
Those are the words I heard when I first voted for president back in 1980. I have heard them prior to every subsequent election. It's being shouted even louder now.
It's crap. Step out of the outrage-driven twenty-four hour news cycle and look at things objectively. We are a huge country with a large, diverse population and a long history and strong institutions. We're not going to change overnight for either good or evil.
So who's saying it and why? Democrats and their compliant media allies who want me to fear and hate Republicans, and Republicans and their compliant media allies who want me to fear and hate Democrats.
I refuse.
Do you honestly expect me to hate my brother or my sister or my friends because they're voting for Trump? Or Biden? What? Are you crazy?
Here's the truth.
Donald Trump never gave me a ride to the airport at five a.m.
Joe Biden never came over and helped me move.
Mitch McConnell didn't comfort me when my sister shot herself.
Nancy Pelosi did nothing to soothe my heart when my first love left me.
But my friends and family did. And now I'm supposed to shun them because they're voting for another candidate? You must be out of your freaking mind! We live in a country with two hundred and forty million eligible voters and you expect me to throw away lifelong relationships because of their one vote. That's worse than insane. It's emotional suicide.
But what about injustice, you ask? Am I turning a blind eye to that?
No, not at all. I see injustice all around me. I just don't see how partisan hatred is going to solve it. If you dig down deep enough into any injustice, you will find that the root cause is always hatred or fear. And I guarantee it will not be solved by more hatred and fear. You don't fight fire with fire. You fight it with water.
No law will expel racism from the hearts of individuals. It will only drive it deeper and keep it more hidden.
What will end racism? Friendship. It's very easy to demonize a group. It's infinitely harder to hate someone who treats you with kindness and respect.
I talked to hundreds of people while compiling my extensive family tree. Many of the older people I talked with had fled downtown East Baltimore as a result of the white flight during the 1950s. At the time they were horrified at the prospect of living with African Americans.
Guess what? In the ensuing decades, the lily-white neighborhoods they fled to slowly became racially-mixed. Now, in their senior years, they have learned to appreciate and respect their new black neighbors. I heard this attitude repeated to me by many former flighters. They would tell me, sometimes with more than a little surprise, about how kind and helpful their new black neighbors were. For example, I was touched when my eighty-eight-year-old Uncle Butch declared that the African immigrant who drove him to dialysis treatment every day was his best friend. My uncle was a good man, but he was also a product of his times. And guess what. Bill Clinton didn't change his heart. Neither did George W. Bush. Nor did a Supreme Court ruling. His heart was changed by simple kindness. That's all it took.
Sometimes I think you can do more to end racism by pulling over onto the side of the road to help someone change a tire than attending a political rally.
The worst problems in this country are ultimately problems of the heart. And they can only be changed face-to-face, one person at a time. To assign that job to the government abdicates our personal responsibility as human beings. To choose to hate, demean, deride and ridicule half of the people in this country who don't vote the way you do is counter-productive. And it is a choice. You are not morally compelled to hate people.
So what am I going to do for the next four years if Trump wins? The same thing I am going to do if Biden wins.
I am going to love my wife and my family. I will also try to show kindness and grace to the people I run into on a daily basis, whether they be friends, acquaintances or strangers. I hope to continue writing about the things that are most important to me. And politics is nowhere near the top of the list. The issues that resonate most deeply in me involve suicidal hopelessness and despair and the hope offered by faith. Those issues cross all party and national lines. They're universal. And I am not going to trap myself in a box, thereby invalidating my testimony in the eyes of half the country, by endorsing a political candidate or party. That would be idiotic.
I find a great deal of wisdom in Reinhold Niebuhr's serenity prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
The older I get, the clearer it becomes what I can change and what I cannot change. And, as a result, I have chosen to put people ahead of parties.
Feel free to hate me for it. It's America. You have the right to do so.
Just don't expect me to hate you back.
